


Letters

by kenobic



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, also maia and alec are the bffs we deserve, journalism class au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 06:50:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11915451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenobic/pseuds/kenobic
Summary: "When he was heading back to his apartment, he imagined the letter he’d write Magnus."an au in which Alec and Magnus study journalism at college and have to write a letter to the first person they've ever kissed. Except that Alec has never kissed anyone. (Bonus: Maia and Alec are best friends).





	1. Chapter 1

Alec really didn’t enjoy college. He liked journalism as a concept, he liked telling stories and he’d always expressed himself better through writing; he liked the idea of, maybe, someday, changing the world with the things he’d write. (He’d always been a sort of utopian in that sense.) He just didn’t like studying all of that in college.

Oral expression was the class he hated the most. They were supposed to learn how to express themselves in television and radio, two areas Alec was sure he wasn’t going to come near to in his life. First of all, because he didn’t like the idea of exposing himself like that. Second of all? He just didn’t know how to come up with a sentence without making an incoherent mess of words and verbal tenses. It was frustrating, to say the least.

And if all of that weren’t enough, his classmates were terrible, too. They were all stupid twenty-year-olds that had ended up there because of a thread of coincidences that had nothing to do with passion. (Well, not all of them.)

The first assignment of the semester was to write a letter to the first person you’d ever kissed. They were supposed to, when the professor called their names, read it out loud in front of everyone, ‘expressing themselves orally’. Maybe out of arrogance, Alec thought it was a stupid assignment and didn’t do it. Now that he thought about it, it wasn’t exactly arrogance. He just didn’t want to say in front of all of those jerks that he’d never kissed anyone. In his life. Not even a girl in kindergarten. No one. He could’ve invented someone, it wouldn’t have been harder than writing any piece of fiction, but it just didn’t feel right. So when their professor, a short lady that could easily have been ten years older than them, called, “Alexander Lightwood”, he replied, “I… uh… didn’t do it.” She just passed to the next one in the list. That was the thing about college. No one really gave a fuck.

Thursday after Thursday, he listened to everyone else’s letters. None of them caught his attention; there wasn’t anything wrong about them, it just was that there wasn’t anything _good_ either. Until Maia and Magnus came around. (He thought them having a name that started with the same letter wasn’t a coincidence.)

Maia came first.

The first thing Alec thought was that she carried herself with a confidence he’d never be able to achieve. It was almost like she didn’t feel everyone’s eyes on her skin, or the opposite, like she enjoyed that. She sat on the floor, unfolded the paper she’d been carrying and started reading.

“Dear Jordan,” she began. “I swear I’m going to burn this paper after I read it.” Some people laughed. She didn’t. “We were sixteen when we met. This story is so cliché I’m almost embarrassed. You were the popular one, the guy every girl wanted to be with. I was just Maia, or so I thought. I didn’t think I was beautiful enough, smart enough, _enough_ , for someone like you to like me. I was wrong. When we first kissed, hidden in an empty classroom, I remember feeling the most beautiful I’d ever felt. We started dating and everything was beautiful, as if my happiness was enough for everything around us to get rid of its ugliness.” She sighed. Her eyes were fixated on the paper. She didn’t know – none of them knew – what might’ve happened if only she’d looked up to the rest of them. “But magic has limits, and our magic certainly wasn’t an exception. I once told you I was yours. You took it literally. The first time you told me you didn’t like it when I chose to go out with anyone else instead of you, I took it. But then I thought maybe _you_ were wrong. And that was the end. Or so I thought. When a morning I woke up at the hospital, bruises all over my body, I realized that it wasn’t.”

Alec had suddenly forgotten how to breathe. He felt as if he had a big rock on his chest. The girl beside him slowly whispered ‘no’, and when he turned to face her, she had a hand over her mouth and tears in her eyes. And for a second, he wanted to be her, to just let go of everything he felt, crying. But no matter how much he’d try, tears wouldn’t come and angst would stay, painful, on his chest. He realized he wouldn’t be the same person he used to be after hearing that letter.

He approached her after class. “Uh… it’s Maia, right?” She just nodded. “I really liked what you wrote.”

“I didn’t.” was her answer.

“But you still read that out loud. In front of everyone.”

“Yeah, I’m… regretting that. Every second that passes I regret that more and more.” She shrugged, an uncomfortable smile on her face. “Whatever. Everyone was telling cute stories and I ruined it.” She sighed, and then her expression changed, as if she had just suddenly gotten an idea. “You got a lighter?”

Alec’s eyebrows went up. “I don’t smoke.”

“Me neither. You want to help me get one?”

That was how they’d stay out of the classroom door, asking everyone if they had a lighter Maia could borrow. One of the guys Alec didn’t usually care about gave them an affirmative response, and Maia took the sheet of paper out of her jacket’s pocket. She took the lighter in her hand and set the paper on fire. Alec’s mouth let out a ‘wow’ he couldn’t repress, and without thinking, he distanced himself from her a bit. The paper fell on the floor, flames slowly consuming it second after second. Then she started angrily stepping on it; she didn’t want to set _everything_ on fire. Without looking at him, she muttered a ‘thank you’ and gave the guy his lighter back. The flames wouldn’t fade away, though, so Alec started stepping on the paper with her. They didn’t know how much time they’d been like that, but when the fire had smothered, they stared at each other in silence. Then, they laughed with relief and disbelief.

There were moments you couldn’t share with someone without becoming friends, and this had been one of those moments.

Maia and Alec turned out to have a lot in common. First of all, they both were regretting having taken journalism, but it wasn’t strong enough for them to want to drop out. And they had _so much_ to say about the rest of their classmates. They started sitting together, each Thursday. Alec thought it had been a good idea, and it mostly was, but Maia started noticing how he looked at Magnus.

Because the truth was, besides from her, Magnus was his favorite person in oral expression class. He was the only one that said hi when he entered the classroom and the only one that said goodbye when he left. The only one that seemed mildly interesting, or that seemed to have a kind soul. The only one, and this included him and Maia, that seemed to actually be enjoying that class. And, well, Alec wasn’t blind. The guy always had perfectly applied makeup and clothes that made him look like he was about to walk through a runway. And he was immensely hot.

“You know, nothing will happen if you don’t do anything,” Maia had told him over coffee. It was nothing Alec didn’t already know, but he just… didn’t want to fuck up. Doing something could lead to that.

But some Thursdays later, it was Magnus’s turn to read the story of his first kiss.

He walked with ease to the front of the class with a neatly folded piece of paper in his hand. He unfolded it and began, “Dear Matt.” A girl sitting next to Maia told her friend, “See? I told you he was gay.” Alec rolled his eyes without even trying to help it. He looked at the girl and said, “I know you’re stupid but can you like, not be so evident about it?” He turned to face Magnus, who hadn’t continued reading. Maia laughed soundlessly at his audacity.

“Dear Matt,” he repeated. “It’s been years. Recently I’ve been thinking about you, about those afternoons we used to spend at your house. You were so beautiful; pale, blond, and huge, blue sky eyes. We went to high school together, sharing the lack of interest in the subjects that were supposed to be taught to us, and the amount of interest we had for things that maybe weren’t that important. I still remember how much I liked you. How much I wanted you. But I didn’t say anything, because doing so would’ve meant losing you, and I didn’t want to lose my best friend. I’ve been thinking about a specific day. I’d gone to your house to study, as usual.” He tilted his head, and the memory made him smile a bit. “You mom used to make tea and cookies, and left us all alone in your bedroom to study. To study… And one day, it just-- happened. I don’t remember _how_ , really. But suddenly we were on your bed, half naked, bodies pressing against each other, kissing passionately. To be finally able to kiss your lips, to embrace your beautiful body felt liberating. It gave me a sort of nostalgia to think about everything that could’ve happened but didn’t. You just didn’t want anything to do with me after that afternoon. I grew up, I confirmed my sexuality. You didn’t. I don’t know. I felt like writing this letter and tell you things I never told you.”

And it was there, again. The painful angst that didn’t let Alec breathe. He let out a deep sigh and bit his lower lip. Beside him, Maia had her eyes hugely opened and her lips parted. She turned to face him, and said, “You gotta go tell him.”

“Tell him what?” Alec said, in a voice so low it was almost a whisper.

“Anything, okay? Talk to him about how much you hate mayonnaise, I don’t care.” Maia’s voice was deep and authoritative, in a way that made Alec feel he’d face the consequences if he said no.

It was mostly her, actually, the one that had made him wait for Magnus when the class had finished. She left him there all alone, with her words, “You call me later, okay?”, haunting him in the most amusing way he could think of. His heart started racing when Magnus walked through the door. It felt like being in high school all over again. What was he supposed to say?

But obviously, Magnus spoke first, with his usual smile and his usual, “Bye.”

“Uh, Magnus?” he said. A part of him was already regretting this. “The letter you wrote, it… uh… touched me. A lot.”

“I’m glad it did.” Was his response. “Actually, I’ve wanted to read yours.”

Alec laughed. He couldn’t possibly understand how anyone could ever want to read anything of his. “Why?”

“I figured you’d have interesting things to say.”

“If you find blank pages interesting, then you’d probably enjoy it,” Alec spoke without thinking. Then he bit his lip, wondering why on earth his subconscious thought saying any of that would be a good idea.

They both stayed in silence, staring at each other’s eyes. It was kind of uncomfortable, holding Magnus’s gaze, staring at his curled lashes and perfectly applied eyeliner. But at the same time, he didn’t want to stare at anything else. “You’ve never kissed anyone,” he heard Magnus say.

“Never.”

The only thing he could hear was each other’s breaths. After long minutes, he said, “Maybe… Maybe I should…” _Maybe I should go._ But that sentence was never finished.

Magnus kissed him, caressing his neck softly with his hands. At first he was too surprised to do anything, but then, Alec started kissing back. It was awkward and messy, just like a first kiss should be. He’d described an incredible amount of fictional kisses before and now he didn’t know how to describe this one. Perhaps because before he had let himself talk about what others had felt, and now everything was so soft, so new, so _real_ , no words could do it justice.

When he was heading back to his apartment, he imagined the letter he’d write Magnus.


	2. The Letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some people asked me for the letter Alec would write/wrote at the end of the fic, so here it is!

Dear Magnus,

Considering you, in your own words, ‘actually had wanted to read my letter’, I thought it would only be fair if I wrote one.

Not having kissed anyone was one of the things I was most ashamed about. Not only because of what other people would think, but mostly because of what it meant to me.

Being gay in my family wasn’t taken lightly. In fact, it was taken quite harshly. I had to hide who I was until I was old enough to deal with the consequences of it, and coming out only generated a scandal I knew was coming sooner or later. And when I finally had accepted myself for who I was rather than for who everyone wanted me to be, I found myself all alone, thinking about how awkward it would be for someone else to date someone who had never been in a relationship, who had never even had an innocent kiss in kindergarten. That was what I’d always had in my mind, sometimes in the background, easily ignorable, and sometimes more present: I could never have what I wanted. It hurt either way.

Sadness and I started getting along and, when I started college, I thought things would stay the same way they’d always been. But they wonderfully didn’t. I had no way of knowing that, though.

It was Thursday the first day we met, and I was already desperate for the week to end. But you were the oasis in the middle of the desert. You entered the room looking like a model, and I couldn’t help but notice that I looked like… well, like _me._ Which wasn’t a good thing: tired eyes, five-inch dark circles under them, and a face that clearly said, don’t talk to me because I’ll murder you. It’s my normal face, the only one I’ve got, but not the one you want to have when a good-looking guy approaches you, so I thought, please don’t let him sit near me. But you did. Because I’ve always been a lucky guy. Not only you sat near me, you had to say hi. I was already praying to every divinity in heaven to make me inexistent, or at least invisible.

You didn’t seat near me every day, though, because you have a habit of changing seats. I’m the opposite, my seat is _mine_ and mine only. Sometimes we ended up together again. You took neat notes with beautiful handwriting and recorded the lectures with your phone. Not only you were beautiful, you also had your life more or less in order. And when I heard you laughing at one of our professor’s stupid jokes, and I looked at the way your eyes closed and wrinkled, I realized I was so gone for this man.

I kept it a secret, though. I could never have what I wanted, remember? So our relationship limited itself to hellos, goodbyes, and some random comments during class. I appreciated each and every one of them, and every time I wanted to say something, I screamed at my sister through the phone. (Yes, I’ve got a sister. She’s like me, but better. So much better.) Saying something to you could’ve gotten a no for an answer; I knew that, and I didn’t want a no for an answer.

Then you read your letter.

I’ve always envied people that cry over nothing, and after that letter, I really wanted to cry. But tears wouldn’t come and I had to stay there, alone with my ugly feelings. Maia told me to go and tell you how it had made me feel. (God bless her.) There I stood, struggling with sentence-making, and there you stood, pretending not to notice. I don’t know why I told you I’d never kissed anyone. Something around your being made me feel that you wouldn’t mind, that you could be trusted. And then you kissed me. Softly. For some reason, I thought that, in movies, when people kiss, even if it’s their first kiss, they know what to do. I didn’t. I didn’t have the remotest idea. You just kissed me. And it felt like going home.

Yours,

Alec.


End file.
